Commentary By Ron Beasley�
Joseph Tainter thinks that complex societies require a continuous flow of energy to maintain the complexity and when the energy required to maintain that complexity exceeds the value of the complexity the society collapses. But what happens when the complexity of the energy source itself is too complex? That question is about to be answered in the Fukushima prefecture in Japan. The 9.0 earthquake and 30 foot tsunami which regardless of what you may hear was predictable turned the Fukushima Diachi plant into a nuclear nightmare.
And once again our prediction about Fukushima (namely the inevitable entombment of the entire facility in thousands of tons of concrete) is about to be realized. Bloomberg reports that Japan will consider pouring concrete into its crippled Fukushima atomic plant to reduce radiation and contain the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. The reason for the admission of total defeat is the gradual comprehension that the worst case scenario has come to pass: "The risk to workers might be greater than previously thought because melted fuel in the No. 1 reactor building may be causing isolated, uncontrolled nuclear chain reactions, Denis Flory, nuclear safety director for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at a press conference in Vienna." Not one to cover up the worst case outcome for a week, TEPCO only did so... for five days: "Radioactive chlorine found March 25 in the Unit 1 turbine building suggests chain reactions continued after the reactor shut down, physicist Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, wrote in a March 28 paper." It's good thought" Radioactive chlorine has a half-life of 37 minutes, according to the report." It appears Japan is willing to give up, and write off a several hundred square kilometer area, as nobody in their right mind will ever agree to move in next to a territory that, contrary to lies, er, promises, will not seep radioactivity in the soil and in the water. This is an unprecedented admission of defeat by the Japanese which unfortunately may be the only solution, which will certainly have major implications for the Japanese economy.
The best case scenario is that there will be a 100 km no man's zone around the facility for generations. That's a lot of real estate for an island nation with no excess land. That will certainly impact Japan but combined with the earthquake and tsunami will impact the global economy.
Sixty percent of the silicon waffers - the foundation of the semiconductor industry - come came from Japan. The facilities for the other forty percent cannot make up for the loss. It will be months before some of the Japanese plants are in production again and thanks to Fukushima at least one of them probably never will. Automobile plants around the world will be forced to reduce production because they won't be able to get parts from Japan and that includes Ford, GM and BMW.
In the 50's, 60's. and early 70's companies were vertically integrated - they produce most of their own parts. This started to change in the mid 70's as the they found it cost effective to outsource. Globalization in the 90's meant those components were coming from thousands of miles away. This was possible because of cheap liguid fuel, aka oil. This paradigm was already coming to an end with increasing oil prices but the earthquake in Japan may have accelerated it.
Even if companies don't become more verteically integrated they are going to insist that their suppliers are closer. Increasing transportaion costs were already on the way to undermining globilzation. The earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster in Japan will speed this up.
Intel's largest facility is a few miles from me. Will they start making their own silicon wafers? Not in the near future - the equipment to do so comes from Japan.
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